By James DeMeo, Ph.D.
Director of Research
Orgone Biophysical Research Lab
Ashland, Oregon, USA
E-mail to: info(at)orgonelab.org(Click or copy into your email program and insert the "@" symbol)

Copyright (C) 1994
All Rights Reserved by James DeMeo

In response to the recent articles by Joel Carlinsky and Richard
Morrock (Skeptic, Vol.2, #3) attacking the works of Wilhelm
Reich, and my own work as well, I wish to provide the following
clarifications:

1. Reich's work is natural scientific in nature, and much of
it, even the more controversial findings on bions, orgone energy
and cloudbusting, has been experimentally evaluated, and confirmed.
I will cite only a few relevant studies: There is the 1988 diploma
thesis by S. Muschenich and R. Gebauer (Psycho-Physiological
Effects of the Reich Orgone Accumulator) undertaken at the
University of Marburg, in Germany.(1) This was a controlled,
double-blind experiment demonstrating a statistically-significant
verification of the basic parasympathetic stimulation of the orgone
accumulator upon human test subjects. Quite a few positive clinical
reports on orgone accumulator therapy of cancer patients have
appeared in German scholarly journals, the most notable of which
is that by Dr. H. Lassek in a documentation volume on natural
healing methods, complied by the German government.(2) Dozens
of other studies could be cited, from the USA and overseas, including
quite a few verifications of Reich's biogenesis experiments.
From my own institute alone, there are several Special Reports
and four issues of our journal, Pulse of the Planet, all
of which summarize more recent scientific evidence corroborating
Reich for anyone willing to take an honest look.(3) A Bibliography
on Orgone Biophysics I edited contains an additional 400 separate
citations by Reich and 100+ other natural scientists, most of
whom hold the M.D. or Ph.D. degrees, taken from various published
journals between 1935 and 1986.(4) From 1986 to today, another
100 or so additional citations could be gathered. My own work,
undertaken as graduate student at the University of Kansas, was
the first at any university to address Reich's biophysical findings,
and produced generally positive confirming results. My 1979 Thesis
evaluating the Reich cloudbuster demonstrated unusual increases
in rainfall and cloud cover over the state of Kansas during field
trials.(5) My 1986 Dissertation provided the first global geographical
maps of human behavior, demonstrating a previously-unknown historical
and cross-cultural connection to the large Old World desert belt
(Saharasia), and a powerful vindication of Wilhelm Reich's sex-economic
theory of human behavior.(6) My other cloudbuster experiments,
during droughts and in desert lands in both the USA and overseas
(Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Namibia) have been evaluated by using
measured National Weather Service or other official weather data,
and employ generally-accepted case-study methodology; these field
studies on cloudbusting and related issues of drought and desertification
have been presented for open discussion and debate to the Association
for Arid Lands Studies, the Association of American Geographers,
the International Society for Biometeorology, and to various
International Symposia, such as the Congress on Geo-Cosmic
Relations and Symposium on Biological and Physico-Chemical
Processes with Solar Activity and Other Environmental Factors.(7)
This, in addition to various papers at professional Symposia
devoted specifically to Reich. I can also mention the independent
inference or outright discovery of an orgone-like energetic principle
in space, in living creatures, and in high vacuum by scientists
other than Reich, such as Giorgio Piccardi, Dayton Miller, Halton
Arp, Hannes Alfven, Harold Burr, Louis Kervran, Frank Brown, Robert
Becker, Bjorn Nordenstrom, Jacques Benveniste, and Rupert Sheldrake.(8)
These latter findings collectively challenge the currently popular
ideology of the "big-bang" and "empty-space"
universe, and similarly the supremacy of biochemical theory for
explaining fundamental life processes. But I wonder how many
in the skeptics movement are genuinely interested in evidence?

2. Regarding the articles in Skeptic, nearly every active
researcher who has studied Reich's works knows about Joel Carlinsky,
through his many different persona: There is "Joel the Reichian"
who claims more knowledge about Reich and orgonomy than anybody
else, and "Joel the cloudbusting expert", who claims
to have undertaken many cloudbusting operations around the world,
raising money through his "Blue Sky Research" cloudbusting
company; And we cannot forget "Joel the environmentalist",
who has condemned me and other cloudbuster operators for allegedly
creating severe weather damages with the cloudbuster. In a recently
published environmental magazine (9), Carlinsky denounced me for
creating terrible weather havoc around the world, passionately
urging everybody to "stop DeMeo"! Of course, "Joel
the skeptic" says cloudbusting does not work at all -- but
such contradictions never bothered Carlinsky before. Indeed,
in an unsolicited 1990 letter to me, he bragged about using a
cloudbuster to purposefully create severe weather, which killed
people. In this additional role as "Joel the environmental
terrorist", Carlinsky also repeated his often-stated mission
to "disable nuclear power plants" by pointing cloudbusters
at them -- a lunatic threat notable only for its expressed goal.
He once repeated this threat to a group of radical environmentalists
and animal-rights activists, apparently hoping to win their favor
and confidence. Unfortunately for Carlinsky, this group had just
previously been investigated by the FBI regarding plots to bomb
power transmission towers at a nuclear power plant, and for another
bombing plot against the US Surgical company animal laboratory.
Carlinsky was, rightly or not, publicly identified in an animal-rights
magazine as an FBI agent provocateur.(10) But his most
widely-known action, in relationship to Wilhelm Reich, was the
burglary of the Wilhelm Reich Museum (11) -- he served time in
prison for that escapade. Carlinsky seems to have found his true
self in his role as emotional pest (he brags about it on page
110 of Skeptic), and he has written various wild and threatening
letters, disinformation flyers, and smear articles attacking me
and other Reich scholars. A few of his items, cleaned up of the
more libelous statements, have even appeared in the skeptics press.
Sooner or later, I suspect he will get into another legal entanglement,
dragging one or another skeptic group down with him. I could
provide additional evidence, but the point is made. Somehow,
the readers of Skeptic magazine are supposed to believe
that Carlinsky is a serious researcher, sane and rational, while
Reich and me and other working scientists interested in orgone
are the crazy ones. Give me a break!

3. Let's review a few specifics from the articles by Carlinsky
and Morrock: They take the usual tiresome and well-worn approach
widely used by skeptics -- firstly, selected research findings
are magnified and exaggerated in a spectacular manner, purposefully
concealing essential facts from the reader (such as the scientific
evidence backing up those findings); the distorted findings are
then smashed down like straw men, without serious examination.
Or, facts established by experiment are presented as "allegations"
in quote marks, while sensationalist, false and misleading materials
are presented as fact. Here are some examples:

A) In Carlinsky's articles, the first paragraphs discussing
Reich and his experiments places quotations around the words "discoverer",
"science", "scientific", and "orgone",
in an effort to portray not only Reich, but anybody engaged in
studying his works as not being a "real" scientist.
The truth, however, is that Reich and his main followers are
trained scientists with all the top degrees from established universities,
generally with decades of clinical, laboratory, and field research
experience. In reality, it is Carlinsky and Morrock who lack
sufficient scientific background to make penetrating criticisms.
Carlinsky knows the findings of Reich sufficient to use the correct
terms (bion, orgone, etc.), but always in a dismissive context.

B) Carlinsky states the FDA "did not accept Reich's medical
claims", but fails to note that several Freedom-of-Information
Act searches of FDA files show the FDA, from the start, acted
not to honestly investigate Reich, but to get him on any
pretext they could find.(12) Firstly, they attempted to "prove"
the existence of a non-existent "sex cult". Failing
to find evidence supporting that nasty allegation, they turned
towards examination of the orgone accumulator. Here, they mostly
took an "armchair analysis" approach, condemning the
results of his experiments as "impossible". The few
orgone energy experiments which were undertaken by FDA scientists
failed to reproduce the original necessary protocols and control
procedures outlined by Reich. Even so, the FDA orgone experiments
often showed anomalous results in keeping with Reich's original
claims; but these results were ignored or overlooked. My own
F.O.I.A. search of FDA files indicated the complete absence of
any valid evidence which could be used to justify the FDA's sweeping
condemnation of Reich's work.(13) This point is important, because
the skeptics continually write about Reich's imprisonment as if
the FDA had undertaken its investigation in an ethical and honest
manner. The evidence suggests the opposite is true.

C) Both Carlinsky and Morrock issue blanket condemnations of
everyone who obtained positive results investigating Reich's claims.
While they do mention the names of a few individual workers and
various research journals, everything is subject to quotation-marked
ridicule, and twisted to present a ridiculous image. Regarding
the American College of Orgonomy, for example, Carlinsky vastly
overestimates the membership, journal circulation and funding
of that organization. They both portray the conservative politics
of the ACO as being characteristic of other followers of Reich,
which is not necessarily the case. For example, my own cross-cultural
research on behavior in subsistence-level cultures around the
world suggested that the most peaceful, sex-positive and social
cultures were characterized by a "collective" type of
matrilineal clan or village ownership of the means of production,
which is an idea generally opposed by most political conservatives.(6)
Reich clearly identified far-left and far-right politics
as being functionally identical, in that both are power-seeking
and opposed to genuine human freedom. Others have openly challenged
the theory that Reich was persecuted by a Soviet-leftist conspiracy
working through the FDA, or that Reich himself had become politically
conservative to the point of rejecting completely his former Marxist-socialist
beliefs.(14) Hot and open disagreements on these and other issues
exist between the followers of Reich, just as they do in any scientific
discipline, although there is general agreement about his central
findings on sex-economy, orgone energy, and other matters. Carlinsky
and Morrock inaccurately portray all "Reichians" as
being in lock-step uniform nodding agreement about all controversial
aspects of Reich's life and work. They are not, and such a portrayal
is but another straw-man tactic. Indeed, because of this diversity
(which I feel is healthy, so long as individuals make open
criticisims and continue to communicate) there is today no one
central individual or organization who can rationally claim to
fully represent Reich or orgonomy, which is a scientific discipline,
and is neither a religion nor a personality cult.

D) Some additional examples of inaccuracies: Carlinsky knows
that I am not a member of the American College of Orgonomy, and
that I have my own private institute. He also knows I have many
published articles in science journals, and he deliberately misspells
my name. A larger example from the Morrock paper: The US government's
legal case against Reich was darkly colored in a manner that should
alarm everyone concerned with civil rights and due process of
law. Every technicality which could work against Reich was magnified
by the courts into "major concerns", in a very calculated
manner; his conviction for contempt of court resulted entirely
from a purely technical violation of the original court injunction
by a co-worker, at a time when Reich was engaged in desert-greening
field work, thousands of miles away. By contrast, every technicality
which would benefit Reich was systematically ignored as "irrelevant";
Reich's former personal attorney was the prosecutor of
the case, and his written Response to the FDA complaint,
presented to the Judge, was completely ignored and trashed. More
significantly, every prosecutor and judge who reviewed the Reich
legal case, from the district court in Portland to the U.S. Supreme
Court which reviewed the final appeal, knew the court order
specifically demanded the banning and burning of books... and
yet, not a single judge objected! Morrock portrays Reich,
a dead victim of judicial and medical-bureaucratic tyranny during
the McCarthy period, as being responsible for his own death.
This is blaming the victim.

The Skeptic articles are saturated with numerous similar
dismissive statements and twists of truth, and a simple listing
would require too many additional pages. The most factual representations
in the articles were the artistic drawings, but even these carried
a dismissive caption criticizing Reich's 1950s haircut, as if
that also were an important issue in the evaluation of his research
findings. If this is the best the skeptics can do, to once again
attack Reich and his followers by ignoring and distorting the
positive published evidence, using the usual smear methods,(15)
then I feel confident that interest in Reich will continue to
grow. In fact, the Skeptic articles will surely stimulate
even more positive interest in Reich's work, and in my work also.
I suspect a growing percentage of those who read the skeptics
literature today do so to see "what is new" on the scene
which is being attacked by the New Inquisition. No genuine scientific
thinker will be convinced by the admit-nothing-positive, adolescent
"make-fun" and contemptuous tone of their articles.

I again suggest the skeptics read up on the principles of scientific
ethics, stick to rational and open, constructive criticism of
unorthodox ideas, provide an open forum for rebuttal and response,
and work to keep their organizations clean of deceptive truth-benders,
law-breakers and threat-makers. Every branch of science is benefited
by genuine scientific criticism, and Reich's work is no different
in this respect -- but so far, I have seen little in the way of
honest or rational criticism of Reich from the "skeptics".

James DeMeo, Ph.D.
Editor, Pulse of the Planet
Director of Research
Orgone Biophysical Research Lab
Ashland, Oregon, USA

5. James DeMeo, "Preliminary Analysis of Changes in Kansas
Weather Coincidental to Experimental Operations with a Reich Cloudbuster",
Geography-Meteorology Department, University of Kansas, Lawrence,
1979. Reprint available from http://www.naturalenergyworks.net

6. James DeMeo, "The Origins and Diffusion of Patrism in
Saharasia, c.4000 BCE: Evidence for a Worldwide, Climate-Linked
Geographical Pattern in Human Behavior", World Futures,
30(4):247-271, March-May 1991 (This article summarizes the 560+
page University of Kansas dissertation "On the Origins and
Diffusion of Patrism: The Saharasian Connection", Geography
Dept., 1986.) Now available in the book Saharasia

7. James DeMeo, "A Dynamic Biological-Atmospheric-Cosmic
Energy Continuum: Some Old and New Evidence", Abstracts,
11th International Congress of Biometeorology, Int. Society
for Biometeorology, Purdue University, September 1987; also published
in Geo-Cosmic Relations: The Earth and its Macro-Environment,
Proceedings, First International Congress on Geo-Cosmic Relations,
April 1989, Amsterdam, Netherlands, G.J.M. Tommassen, Editor,
PUDOC Science Publishers, Wageningen, 1989.

8. See chapter on "Discovery of an Unusual Energy by Scientists
Other than Reich", in James DeMeo, The Orgone Accumulator Handbook, Natural Energy Works, 1989; also see: J. DeMeo, "The Orgone Energy Continuum:
Some Old and New Evidence", Pulse of the Planet 2:3-9,
1989, and the citations in #7, above.

13. James DeMeo, "Postscript on the Food and Drug Administration's
Evidence Against Wilhelm Reich", Pulse of the Planet,
1:18-23, 1989.

14. See the letter exchanges: "Objections and Response",
Journal of Orgonomy, 9(2):266-270, 1975, and "On the
Appropriation and Distortion of Orgonomy", Journal of
Orgonomy, 16(2):284-289, 1982.

15. James DeMeo, "Response to Martin Gardner's Attack on
Reich and Orgone Research in the Skeptical Inquirer",
Pulse of the Planet, 1:11-17, 1989. Also online, here:http://www.orgonelab.org/gardner.htm